Monday, June 06, 2011

Nick Redfern's The REAL Men in Black: A Paranoiac's Handbook

Nick Redfern’s latest effort is one of his best; he never fails to satisfy or enlighten, and he doesn’t this time either.

The RMIB, as I’ll call it, takes readers through the mystery commonly known among UFO aficionados and paranomalists as “the men in black” – a term derived from weird circumstances involving a UFO “researcher” – Albert Bender – and a cohort of his, Gray Barker in the 1950s.

Mr. Redfern provides exquisite details about the Bender/Barker “affair” which is a textbook case about paranoia and madness more than anything else.

But Mr. Redfern doesn’t stop there. He presents a host of other MIB episodes, which also, to this reader, showcase mental aberrations of various kinds, all psychotic in nature.

Chapters 4 through 12 provide a litany MIB cases or related events that psychiatry would have a field day with:

“It was a blistering hot day when Jane’s attention was drawn to three tall, golden-skinned, bearded men. They were dressed in black suits, black hats, black shoes, and very heavy, woolen full-length coats that…were also black in color…

A few weeks later…Jane was listening to a radio talk show…when one particular caller related her own…UFO experience…The caller’s encounter was followed by a visit from three men dressed completely in black clothing…This story gave Jane a jolt…[and she] wondered if she hadn’t been ‘marked or implanted’ by the aliens and if she was being followed.” [Pages 113-114]

Then in Part II of the book, Mr. Redfern gives readers all, and I mean all, the theories that have been proffered for the MIB phenomenon, including hallucinations, hoaxes, archetypal “tricksters,” G-men, and time-travelers among others.

The deep mental disfigurations are implied by Mr. Redfern, but he refrains from going so far as to say that MIB experiencers are nuts.

Mr. Redfern, if I’m reading him correctly, leans towards the “paranormal” aspect of MIB visitations, which makes sense even to those, like me, who think MIB events are products of the ill-mind.

Paranormality can account for some MIB instances, since a few persons visited by the black-clad personages have a semblance of sanity about themselves.

What always surprises me about Mr. Redfern’s forays into the unknown is his encapsulating accounts of demons and devils, since he is non-believer in things with a religious patina. (And I don’t think he believes in God.)

Mr. Redfern, in The Real Men in Black, gives readers, as is his wont in all his writings, between-the-lines insights and details, not minutiae necessarily, that can take readers to other areas of paranormality, which are touched on, and subliminally relevant to the whole panoply of the fringe reality.

So, if you’re a seeker of truth, and want a manual about one element in the weird world of UFOs and the paranormal, get Mr. Redfern’s book.

You will not be disappointed.

The book is published, nicely, by New Page Books, a Division of Career Press, and can be found at Amazon, among other booksellers, and can be had via NewPageBooks.com I surmise.